Common sense tells me to turn on the air conditioning. It will be in the low nineties today, high humidity. But another impulse keeps it off, a desire to be one with the summer, to feel the heat, to be cooled by fans and not refrigerated air.

And I think the house likes it, too. The wood swells, the plants thrive. Paper softens and curls. Deck doors are thrown open so the outside comes in.

A breeze flows through from back to front. A chorus of cicada song rises and falls, and because the windows are open I can hear it.

Summer is best in an open house.